


tell me again that you love me, whisper it like a secret but tell me again

by ravenditefairylights



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Flower Crowns, Fluff, M/M, Mount Pelion fic, Not Beta Read, POV First Person, POV Patroclus, i can't believe i'm saying this but this is all pure cathartic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-17 02:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16507700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenditefairylights/pseuds/ravenditefairylights
Summary: “Pay attention to me,” he complains --whines, really-- as if I can ever ignore him. My eyes are still open, transfixed on him suddenly, and he grins at the attention, stealing a kiss. It is fleeting, just the brush of his lips against mine and then he’s gone; sitting back on his heels. He’s grinning at me still, tugging at my arms and trying to lift me up-- only he is using too little strength. I lean forward to help him, sitting up, but as soon as I do Achilles abandones me and springs up.“Race you!” he calls, laughing, and then he’s gone again.





	tell me again that you love me, whisper it like a secret but tell me again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rorythelion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rorythelion/gifts).



> Happy (late) birthday friend!!

“Patroclus?”

“Hmm...”

“Patroclus,” a nudge at my shoulder comes, gentle but persistent.

I do not open my eyes, “hmm…”

I feel his breath on my face, his nose bumping against mine; nudging me gently. I open my eyes then, to find his deep-green ones staring down at me.

“Patroclus?” _Pa-tro-clus._

His breath is warm on my face, and it smells sweetly of the figs we had before. His deep green eyes are twinkling with excitement, his smile shining; blinding. His face is framed by the light of the sun, his golden hair like a halo of divine light around him. I want to engrave him in my memory like this --young and carefree and happy-- the flecks of gold in his deep green eyes, the curve of his elegant cheekbones and that smile…

“Pay attention to me,” he complains --whines, really-- as if I can ever ignore him. My eyes are still open, transfixed on him suddenly, and he grins at the attention, stealing a kiss. It is fleeting, just the brush of his lips against mine and then he’s gone; sitting back on his heels. He’s grinning at me still, tugging at my arms and trying to lift me up-- only he is using too little strength. I lean forward to help him, sitting up, but as soon as I do Achilles abandones me and springs up.

“Race you!” he calls, laughing, and then he’s gone again.

I follow after him without a second thought; I need not think, I will follow him anywhere. He only needs to lead and I will follow him forever; I trust him with my life and more still.

He arrives first --of course he does-- and I’m out of breath, but I can’t get the smile off my face. He’s leaning against an oak trunk, arms crossed over his chest and that cheeky, maddening grin adorning his face. He’s regarding me with the look of someone who exasperatedly but fondly waits for their companion, as if I am late by hours.

“I won,” he declares it like an accomplished fact, a statement --a fundamental truth that cannot be denied, simple as that.

“You always win,” I say, but my words hold no bite; I’m still smiling. I am not angry that he is better than me at most things, how can I, when he smiles like this when he runs; like it is his greatest joy. His smiles, and his face is shining like the sun --how can I begrudge him such happiness?

“I know,” his smirk lifts higher with a touch of pride, and very unceremoniously he drops down on the grass; he’s not breathless in the slightest. I settle down next to him, trying to catch my breath, and lean against the oak trunk behind us. Spring has come fully now, and all the nature is flourishing with colours and smells.

Achilles lays his head down on my lap, and immediately, my fingers move to his hair sprayed across my tights. I weave them gently through the gold, softly brushing strands away from his deep green eyes. He sighs contently and closes his eyelids, nestling against me more comfortably.

I distract myself with his curls for some time, until his breaths even out and I am sure he has fallen asleep on me. An idea occurs to me then, and gently as not to wake him I rise and wander, plucking some flowers from the ground. I know that even now, in blossomed spring, it is almost impossible to find amaryllis in Mount Pelion, so I settle for something simple. I do not want for Achilles to wake up alone, but even so I take my time searching for the right flowers.

Chiron had tried to teach us the language of flowers, once, but Achilles had not been interested in it. He knew that I was, and so he tried to show interest but I knew him well enough to know that the lessons bored him, and we stopped them altogether. However, I have not forgotten what little I learned, and I set out to find the flowers I want to.

When I return, Achilles is still blissfully sleeping as I reclaim my seat on the grass, and gently I pull his head on my lap again, --missing the comforting weight-- and start to weave the stems together. My hands may not be any good with a sword, or a spear, but this, at least, I can do; weaving the flowers together in a way I cannot do with notes.

“What are you doing?” Achilles’ voice startles me, and I drop the flowers instinctively. I did not feel him wake, but of course he has, and he’s already picked the flowers up before they could fall down on my lap, and he’s twisting the circle of them in his hands. “Is that a flower crown?”

My cheeks burn red, “yes.”

“It’s beautiful," he says, looking at it still.

“It’s for you,” I say, and my cheeks burn even hotter but I meet his eyes easily.

“Oh,” he says, smiles softly and then- “what does it mean?”

“You mean you cannot tell?” I tease him; I know he cannot. “Chiron would be disappointed.”

“Flower language is not a skill I will ever possess, I am afraid,” Achilles smiles at me.

“Good,” I say, and he raises his eyebrows at me. “There must be _something_ you’re not good at that I am.”

“Is it a competition?” he smiles --his cat’s smile-- and his face is inches away from mine; I can smell the figs on his breath.

“Mayhaps,” I struggle to make my voice strong, but it still wavers a little in the end; at least I did not squeak. Achilles’ smirk widens and I know he can tell; it is not fair, what he does to me, but I would not have it any other way.

“Surely then, the winner shall take it,” he continues; a challenge.

“You already have it,” I say, and in the moment it takes him to realize what I have said, I push him backwards and pin him at the grass beneath me. His eyes are wide and oh- this is my revenge.

“What have I won at?” he gasps, and I wonder briefly if the fall knocked the air out of him, but no, he seems fine- “surely, my skill at war cannot win me such a gentle gift.”

“Your skill at music then,” I say, “that would surely win you a gift like this and many others like it.”

I have no skill in music myself, but I do not need even the smallest piece of knowledge of it to know that Achilles has skill to spare. His fingers trace and pluck at the lyre chords with the gentleness of a mother laying her child inside the crib, and he holds the instrument close to him as if it was a child in his arms instead.

“My skill in music is not so great,” he laughs, and I want to disagree.

I have watched him play --admired him; he closes his eyes and lets his fingers fly across the strings with ease mastered after years of training as he plays for me, and I ask him to sing -- _sing for me--_ and he does; he throws his head back and sings. He looks like a masterpiece then, golden hair falling down his shoulders and the sunlight kissing his skin and I wish I had the skill to draw him like this, but I do not-

“You have won my heart,” I say, and his deep-green eyes widen again; we have not said this before. Our love is so obvious I feel we could never say it and yet we would have said a thousand times, with gentle kisses and soft hands and tender smiles; but Achilles’ expression melts into something I cannot place.

“But I would not earn the crown in this, for you have won my heart also,” he only looks at me, and I cannot hold back a soft smile as a warmth blossoms in my chest; tugging and pulling painful almost- no, pleasant.

“Have I?” something in me wants to ask him --wants to make sure even though I know-- so I do.

He sets the flowers crown aside then, moves from under my arms pinning him down until he is sitting in front of me, close enough that our skins brush; warmth blossoming where they touch. His face is close but not close enough, and Achilles’ hands rest on my face, his fingers brushing against the skin around my eyes and the roundness of my cheeks, the line of my jaw until his palms cup my neck; his thumbs brushing my cheeks gently. 

“I love you,” he breathes, soft-spoken and quiet but no less true, and that warmth in my chest is back; so overwhelmingly pleasant and warm that I never want to stop feeling like this. “I love you,” he repeats, and I know that he will say it a thousand times more as long as we live, and the one thousand and one time I will still feel like this; soaring in the clouds --dizzy and light-headed and warm and _safe._

I do not know how to express a feeling so overwhelming and complete, so I do the only thing that I can then, I smile wide enough to make my cheeks hurt and I lean in to kiss him. His lips are soft --they always are-- and I am lost, taken from the grass we sit on and the tree I’m leaning on and there’s nothing else except Achilles; and it’s not even Achilles’ lips or Achilles’ gentle hands holding my face, no, because I cannot feel anything except from the warmth in my chest that threatens to swallow me whole. I let it.

“I love you,” Achilles murmurs it against my lips once, and then again and again and _again-_ “I love you, I love you, _I love you-”_

It’s soft and sincere and he repeats it over and over like a prayer, a litany; pulling back enough to say it and then he claims my lips again, stealing my breath away. My hands are in his hair, my fingers hooking the silken curls and curling around them, and there are hands ghosting touches all over my arms, hands gripping my hips and a trail of soft kisses across my jaw until I lose tracks of which limbs belong to who.

We stop to catch our breaths and Achilles rests his forehead against mine, grinning so wide I think his face might split in two. His deep-green eyes are glazed over, twinkling happily and looking into me like there is nothing else worth looking at and his cheeks are flushed but he looks so stupidly _happy;_ I suppose my face must look much the same.

There’s nothing we say, nothing we can say for a few moments, content to just look at each other; foreheads still touching. I want to live forever in this single moment, Achilles’ eyes are shining, bright suns in the apples of the deep-green irises, like the bronze olive leaves in the golden summer sunlight. There’s stardust inside them, small flecks of gold inside the forest of green, like tricks of the light on the rustling spring leaves.

“I love you,” I say, because it is true and because I have not said the words yet, and because it feels right to say it, to see Achilles’ eyes melt with softness. It is nothing more than a soft smile --loving, genuine; but Achilles is looking at me through lowered lashes with a look of such adoration that I cannot fight back against the blush rising up my cheeks.

He brushes his lips against mine, with a gentleness that almost undoes me, and asks- “say it again. Tell me again.”

 _Tell me again._ As if he needs to ask twice.

“I love you,” I comply, grinning. I find that a warm feeling envelops my heart when his eyes soften again at the words, and I want to be the cause of this every time. “I love you,” and then he’s smiling up at me like I’m the night sky and he’s too transfixed by the light of the stars to look away.

The tugging at my chest is back, crushing, overwhelming, but I have a name for it; it can no longer bother me in the slightest.

_Love. Achilles._

“Tell me again,” the request is followed by hands wrapping around on my own where they’re resting on my lap.

“I love you,” it feels right to say it, and it feels even more right to be the cause of such a reaction from Achilles. He crashes my lips with his own once more, and we stay like this for a while longer. My hands have snaked their way into his curls, resting among the silken locks.

“Tell me again,” he breathes once we break apart. 

“I love you,” I say, because how can I deny him that softness when his deep-green eyes melt at the words every time, when he looks at me like this; like I’m the only thing that matters, the only thing he can see.

I want to live forever here, like this; in Achilles’ arms, with my hands tangled up in his golden hair and his kisses all over my face, his nose nuzzling on the hollow of my collarbone and the scent of him embracing me, engulfing me until it’s the only thing I can sense --until Achilles’ is the only thing I can see, the only thing I can touch. For a moment, I’m too afraid to move, fearing that the spell might break and we will never come to be like this again; almost and yet not quite, completely and yet barely, the same person, the same soul.

But then Achilles reaches down and my hands feel cold where his left, but there’s a weight on my head and I know he’s placed the flower crown on my messy dark mop. He’s sitting back, looking me over with a breathtaking grin, like I’m a work of art he just finished sculpting and he’s admiring his handiwork. I cannot help but blush at the attention.

“What are you thinking?” he cocks his head to the side as he asks, the grin never leaving his face.

“I just-” I find that I don’t have the words to explain him, suddenly too embarrassed. “You’re just looking at me like I’m some sort of-”

“Deity?” he asks, the word as close to the divine as we can safely compare ourselves with. It is a pity, that I can never tell him that he looks more like a god than anyone else will ever be; Apollo be damned.

“I was going to say a sculpture, actually,” I snort at his frown, but it’s soon replaced with a look of fond admiration --a look of adoration-- that takes my breath away.

“A work of art,” he says softly, smiling. He traces a finger across my face; my eyebrows, the corners my eyes, the curve of my cheekbones and the line of my jaw. He kisses me before I have the chance to blush again, or be surprised that he had the same thought I had. I melt into it, letting my world exist only of him for the moments it lasts.

He pulls back sooner than I would have liked, but the look on his face is so loving and happy, and I know then, that we will never stop being like this. This is not a fragile spell that might break, no, I know then that he is I as surely as I am he; two bodies that share the same soul. He is the other half of my soul, and I am the other half of his.

He straightens the crown on my head, and he looks extremely pleased with himself.

“Love,” I say then, thinking back to his first question.

“What?” he draws his brows together, and I resist the urge to smooth the crease away with my fingers.

“The crown, you asked what it means.”

“Oh,” Achilles seems taken aback for a moment, so I rush into an explanation.

“The chrysanthemums symbolize joy and optimist, fidelity,” I feel my cheeks heat up again. “The red carnations are for admiration and love, and, well, I think the red roses are kind of a giveaway.”

Achilles squints at the crown in my head, head tilted- “are those...hyacinths?”

“Mayhaps,” I am fighting down a very persistent blush, but my attempts are not entirely successful; I can feel the heat crawling up my neck and rushing up my face. “I needed more colours.”

“Did you now?” Achilles cockes a brow, trying --and failing-- to hide his smirk. “You expect me to believe that it has nothing to do with the myth?”

“What myth?” I ask innocently, no more successful in hiding my smile than he was. The answer is telling by itself; for how could I forget the night we stayed up under a tree back in Phtia and he first told of the myth of Hyacinthus and the god Apollo --how we laid side by side on the grass, our skins barely brushing against each other and I had to use every bit of strength I had not to turn my head and kiss him.

“Among all the people that Apollo had desired for lovers over the years, the god of music has loved only one above all others, Hyacinthus,” Achilles starts, using the deep voice that has served as a poor imitation of his father’s narrating voice with the sole purpose of making me laugh. “Hyacinthus is a young prince from Sparta, and so strikingly beautiful that not only the Apollo desires him, but Zephyr, the west wind as well. One day, when Apollo is showing Hyacinthus how to throw disk properly, Zephyr succumbs to his jealousy and shifts the winds to kill Hyacinthus with the disk. Apollo, heartbroken by the loss of his lover, turns him into a flower so that his divine beauty and life can be preserved forever.”

The retelling of the story is purposely short, for we both know that I do recall it, but there’s a spark of mischief in Achilles’ eyes as he finishes. He flashes a smile, all teeth --his cat’s smile-- and knocks me backwards on the ground, placing his knees on either side of my waist and his hands on either side of my face so that I am trapped beneath him. And I would not mind --if he insisted that we stay like this for the rest of our lives I would not have denied him.

“Is there something you want to say to me, Patroclus?” _Pa-tro-clus._

I reach up to tuck a golden curl behind his ear, and stay silent but for the soft smile on my face.

“Nothing?” Achilles insists, feigning a look of hurt, and despite the ploy I wish to wipe it off his face.

“I love you,” I say, and Achilles’ face melts away to that look of adoration that I selfishly never want to stop seeing. He kisses me, softly, gently, and yet there is such passion and love in the kiss that I melt under him. When he pulls away, he shifts our positions and holds me close to him gently but firmly, like I am something precious he has been entrusted to treasure and protect. He bumps his nose against mine and I sigh, closing my eyes.

 _This._ Forget immortality and fame, heroes and gods; this is what true happiness feels like --what eternal bliss in Elysium and Olympus can only hope to match. _This and this._ This is what I want my life to feel like -- _Achilles._ The perils of Perseus and the darkness of Theseus and the trials of Heracles could never a have a reward as sweet and precious as this. _This and this and this, forever._

“I would have killed him,” Achilles’ sudden voice and the seriousness of his words forces my eyes open. He must see the question in them, because he explains, “if anyone ever hurt you I would have killed them,” he says. “I would have destroyed them.”

“I don’t think that’s very likely to happen,” I say. “No one bothers with me much.”

“That is all the best,” Achilles tells me with a smile and a kiss on my nose, “it means I can have you all for myself.”

  
_You do,_ I want to say, _you already do._ But then he lips claim mine again and the feeling is too good for me to do anything but be lost in it.


End file.
